Southwest Flight Lands Safely, But at the Wrong Airport

A Southwest Airlines flight from Chicago's Midway International Airport was scheduled to land Sunday night at Branson Airport in southwest Missouri. Instead, the Boeing 737-700 touched down at Taney County airport -- about seven miles away and which has a significantly shorter runway.

"They said that we had stopped in like 3,300 feet, and usually I think they were saying that it should take 5,000 feet for a plane to stop," passenger Shannon Spear said to CBS's Dallas Fort Worth affiliate. "So, we were very lucky indeed, especially considering that there was a cliff at the end of the runway."

The plane landed 500 feet from the end of the runway, Chris Berndt, the Western Taney County Fire District fire chief and emergency management director, told CNN. No passengers were injured.

The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident, according to ABC News. It's the "second time in less than two months that a large jet landed at the wrong airport. In November, a Boeing 747 that was supposed to deliver parts to McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kan., landed 9 miles north at Col. James Jabara Airport."

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noyesjc

Aviation reporting is so "inflammatory" and miss uses terminology in a way that serves only to make the public more anxious about the safest way to travel available in this country. Commercial aviation in this country is safer than cars, boats, trains, even walking to work. This plane did not land 500 feet from the end of the runway. If came to a complete stop 500 feet from the end of the runway. No one has died in a scheduled commercial flight in the United States in about three years. How many thousands have died in their automobiles in same time frame?